Firefighters race to contain blazes ahead of thunderstorms
Firefighters were making progress against several significant wildfires Thursday, authorities in California and Oregon said, though they warned that conditions could allow fires to quickly spread again or start anew around the states.
More than 17,000 firefighters had managed to slow, stall or even diminish some of the major fires in California, Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the state fire agency, Cal Fire, said. The August Complex, which has burned almost 800,000 acres north of Sacramento, was 30% contained, and the North Complex fire, stretching 228,000 acres in Northern California, was 36% contained.
And Californians in the Bay Area were able to enjoy smokefree skies for the first time in weeks: Thursday was the first day with no “Spare the Air” warning after a record 30 consecutive days.
In Oregon, the Beachie Creek fire east of Salem, which has burned nearly 200,000 acres and forced tens of thousands to evacuate, was 20% contained by Thursday morning.
Still, meteorologists said that dry conditions could prime the fires to spread again. A “warming trend” is expected to return to California this weekend, Cal Fire said, with higher temperatures after a relatively cool stretch.
Dry lightning from thunderstorms posed a threat in Oregon, where vegetation remains dry after weeks of high heat and little rain.
Severe thunderstorms were possible later, the National Weather Service said, and wind gusts up to 60 mph and hail up to
the size of quarters may accompany the storms.
“That is always concerning because thunderstorms can produce dangerous lightning and gusty winds and even some small hail,” said Brad Schaaf, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Medford, Oregon.
The storms will move quickly, but the volatile winds, Schaaf said, make it “hard to predict exactly where the winds would push the fires.”
Some major areas of concern for the thunderstorms include the Cascades and eastern Douglas County, and northward into the Willamette Valley, Schaff said. He urged residents who were in warning zones to seek shelter.
“If you hear thunder, go indoors,” Schaaf said.
In the scorched foothills of the Cascades, flash flooding was also a worry.
Any rainfall has the potential to “run off hard and fast if there is nothing on the ground,” said Clinton Rockey, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Portland, Oregon.
Also Thursday, emergency teams continued to search for victims and survivors of the fires, which have killed more than 30 people, destroyed thousands of structures and burned across more than 5 million acres in three states.
Two inmates who were among the 2,750 transported between prisons as fires threatened correctional facilities in Oregon have tested positive for the coronavirus, authorities said.
The dilemma prison officials faced during the evacuations this month was complex, as they grappled with managing large facilities through simultaneous dangers.
There were fears that in saving inmates from the fires, they would trigger a new outbreak of the virus.
So far the positive tests are limited to a female inmate from the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility and a male from the Coffee Creek Intake Center who were both among those evacuated to the Deer Ridge Correctional Institute, more than 100 miles to the southeast.
The inmates were tested Sept. 5 and 6, but test results came in late due to a “delay with the labs,” said Jennifer Black, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Corrections. The department was notified of the results Monday, when the individuals were “immediately medically isolated” and moved back to Coffee Creek, Black said.
At Deer Ridge, an overcrowded state prison, inmates slept shoulder to shoulder in cots and in some cases on the floor; food was in short supply; and showers and toilets were few — conditions that are optimal for the dangerous spread of the coronavirus, experts say.